


Like a Normal Person

by OldToadWoman



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-08
Updated: 2013-12-08
Packaged: 2018-01-03 23:45:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1074459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldToadWoman/pseuds/OldToadWoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson is getting married. Sherlock Holmes is getting drunk. Sally Donovan is getting a headache.</p><p>A bit of fluff where Sherlock and Sally are almost, but not quite, friends at least until they sober up. (Written before season 3.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Normal Person

**Author's Note:**

> This has not been beta'd or proofread by anyone else. (If anyone wants to volunteer, just let me know.)

Sally had not called Sherlock a freak all afternoon. She had, in fact, not called him a freak three times in the last half hour. She'd very carefully bitten her lip and not done it each time the word rose up in her mind. She wondered when she'd finally be able to shake off the guilt that she didn't even think she deserved. It wasn't her fault Moriarty had framed Sherlock or that Sherlock had faked his death. Everyone else had believed it as well. Not perhaps _everyone_ exactly, but _mostly_ everyone and it wasn't Sally's fault if she had thought what any normal person would think under the circumstances.

"You're not even going to the wedding then?" she asked, knowing the man she was very carefully not calling a freak would just respond with "Obviously" or "I already said that" or "Are you deaf as well as stupid?" 

But she was still trying to wrap her brain around it. They were best mates. Of course Sherlock would be the best man. He had to be. Yet he'd implied he wasn't even planning to attend.

"No point." 

Sherlock handed her back the ballpoint pen with which he'd just been poking the corpse. Sally had liked that pen. It wasn't fancy or anything, but it had a nice smooth line and she'd carefully held onto it for weeks, which was a lifetime among the den of pen thieves that comprised Scotland Yard. Sally sighed.

"Keep it."

"Seventeen possibilities, but only three are likely. Talk to his sister obviously, but don't neglect to question the cello player."

One of the junior constables asked, "The cello player?" 

Sally hadn't even thought to wonder. Her mind was still preoccupied.

"You have to go to the wedding. He's your best friend. You _have_ to go to your best mate's wedding."

"The cellist across the street from the victim's flat, third story, windows facing. He should be able to clear up quite a bit. Unless it was just the sister after all. Dull. I don't _have_ to do anything. I am not attending the wedding."

He spoke without a pause between thoughts and Sally wasn't sure if "dull" referred to the case or the wedding or both.

"Fuck. Why can't you do anything like a normal person?!" she snapped. "It doesn't matter if you don't like weddings or think they're boring or don't like who he's marrying or anything! Your best friend is getting married and you have to be there and at least pretend to be happy for him!"

"Like a normal person?" Sherlock suddenly rounded on her, from indifferent to furious in a flash. "Like a normal person?! Do you just make up these rules as you feel like it? Is that how this works? 'Feel something like a normal person, Sherlock! At least act like you care, Sherlock!' And then when I do care, it's suddenly, 'Pretend you don't care, Sherlock.' How the fuck does that make sense?! The only man I have ever loved is marrying someone else in less than a fortnight! How the fuck am I supposed to pretend I'm happy for him?! Tell me! What the hell would a ' _normal person_ ' do?!"

A block and a half away a woman paused while pouring her tea and thought _poor bugger._ Constable Akins stared at his feet and, as a consequence, at some of the stickier bits of their victim and said nothing. Anderson did a stellar impersonation of The Invisible Man. There was a general avoidance of eye contact all around the crime scene.

"Yeah, well, normal people generally start by getting drunk," Sally said, feeling the first, and almost certainly the last, sense of empathy for the maybe-not-a-freak. "Come on. I'm buying."

She called Lestrade on the way to the pub and passed along Sherlock's advice on the cellist and then changed her mind about the pub and led him to the shops instead. Sherlock seemed likely to start a row stone-cold sober. She didn't want to imagine the kind of bar fight he could trigger if she actually succeeded in getting him drunk. 

"I suppose you're a wine sort of person," she said doubtfully. Surrounded by all the bottles, she found herself wondering if this was a good idea after all.

"Doesn't matter," he answered. "This is an exercise in what _normal people_ do." The condescending tone was back, so he was better, but he also sounded tired so not very much better.

"Yeah, well, normal people drink all sorts of different things."

"You normally go down this aisle," he said, walking away from her.

She wasn't going to ask him how he knew that. He wanted her to ask and she wouldn't. Fuck him. She turned and followed him over to the shelf full of what even Sally disparagingly thought of as 'the girly drinks'. "All right, yeah. My girlfriends and I, if we were doing a drink-till-you-forget-him night, we'd load up on the fruity shit. How do you feel about banana schnapps?"

"Sounds vile."

"Perfect then." She grabbed some marshmallow vodka to go with it. She thought she had a few leftover bottles of something or other at home as well. That was her big mistake of the evening. They were at that moment only slightly closer to her home than to Baker Street and if she'd had the tiniest bit of sense she would have taken him all the way back to where she could have dumped his arse on Mrs. Hudson and made a clean get away. But for a fleeting moment she'd allowed herself to think about half a bottle of green-apple-flavoured liquor that she might have at home and how funny Sherlock would look drinking it and so she'd taken him back to her place.

"I don't want to forget him," he explained to his glass of banana-marshmallow elixir several hours later as if there had been no gap in the conversation. (It turned out she and Kendra had killed off the green apple bottle when Oscar had turned out to be an utter prick and the half-bottle of pink stuff tasted even more disgusting than she had remembered.) "Obviously," Sherlock continued before she could say anything, "this is a futile exercise based on trite metaphors, because there is no amount of liquor capable of making anyone forget John Hamish Watson, but purely for the sake of argument, if it were possible – fall down the rabbit hole and eat the cake or drink the drink that could make me forget all about him, I wouldn't want to."

"The cake doesn't make you forget anything. It just makes you smaller. No, bigger. Cake always makes you bigger. It was the drink that made you smaller, I think. The point to getting drunk isn't forgetting really, it's about deciding you're better off without the bastard." Sherlock gave her a withering glance and she amended, "Which, okay, isn't necessarily the case here, but... I mean, Hamish? Really?"

"Pathetic," Sherlock agreed. "Bit adorable, but mostly pathetic."

"She's all right though, isn't she? You'd know if she wasn't. He loves her, right? Is there any reason, proper reason – other than you being a selfish git – why he shouldn't marry her?"

"She's perfectly... perfect." Sherlock shuddered in disgust. "Boring. Safe. Clean. Doesn't do scientific experiments. Only food in the refrigerator. Low probability of ever faking her own death. Never been attacked by assassins. Bit old for it, but it's not beyond the realm of possibilities that they could even produce a litter of boring babies together."

Sally knocked back a shot of the pink shit. After she'd finished shuddering she said, "You have to tell him."

Sherlock seemed to be tilted a bit to the side and she wasn't sure if the banana-marshmallow shit was getting to him or if the pink shit was getting to her. One of them was clearly out of kilter. "I have to warn him that he's in danger of having boring babies?" he finally asked after some consideration.

"You have to tell him why you aren't going to the wedding."

"It won't make any difference."

"He's not going to leave the woman he's in love with for a useless sod like you, no. If that's what you're fantasizing about, it's right out. But as his best friend, you have to tell him why you aren't going to the wedding."

Sherlock glared at her and attempted, with eventual if uncertain success, to stand. "I do not need John Watson's pity."

"Fuck you. You're not listening. Best friends go to each other's weddings. It's part of the job really, isn't it? If you don't go to his wedding and you don't give him a reason why not, you're as good as telling him that you're not his best friend. Do you want John Watson to think you're not his best friend? After everything?" When Sherlock didn't immediately respond, Sally pulled herself to her feet and staggered after him. "Think of the puppy eyes!"

Sherlock closed his eyes and shuddered. "I can't."

She had no idea what it was that he couldn't do. Go to the wedding or tell John why not or think of the puppy eyes? She decided it didn't matter. She didn't have the patience for this. "Right. Whatever. You are not fit for walking. What we need is a taxi cab."

So they ended up both of them in a taxi on their way to John's place, or technically still just Mary's place, but John's nearly and soon to be officially. It was just possible that Sherlock thought they were on their way home to Baker Street when she first bundled him into the vehicle, but he didn't protest as they clearly drove off in the wrong direction.

By the time they actually arrived at the door, he was fully on board with the idea and even managed to get out of the cab and up the front step before Sally could finish paying the driver. 

John already had the door open and was staring at Sherlock with an expression of annoyance when Sally tottered up behind Sherlock. He seemed even more shocked to see her.

"Is it," he asked, eyeing them both oddly, "a case or..." He frowned when Sally involuntarily giggled. "...something?"

"Solved the case already." Sherlock waved vaguely in the air. "Triflingly easy. No, Sally and I are here because we've both gone and got utterly pissed which is apparently what normal people do in these circumstances."

Sally was impressed. He'd managed to say all of that and nearly all the words were pronounced mostly correctly too. 

"Why..."

Sally grunted. "Ugh. Don't ask questions. This has taken too bloody long as it is. You!" She poked Sherlock between his eyes. "Get on with it."

"I'm not going to your stupid, boring wedding to watch you marry the stupid, boring cow. No offence," he added with a tip of an invisible hat to Mary who stood glaring at both of them with her arms crossed.

"This is not how we rehearsed it in the taxi!"

"Sherlock," John said in his calm but dangerous way, "if you just came here to insult..."

"Now!" Sally stomped her right foot. "Stop being a git and just do it now!" She pushed Sherlock forward. Out of balance, he staggered several steps inside, forcing John to retreat or be bowled over.

Without another word, Sherlock grabbed John's head. He pressed him into the most awkward looking kiss in history. John's hands flailed about for a good ten seconds before settling hesitantly on the lapels of Sherlock's coat. He seemed constantly on the verge of shoving Sherlock away to end the seemingly-eternal kiss, but never did.

Mary glared at Sally.

"For the record, that's not how we rehearsed it in the taxi either." One of them, Sally couldn't have said with any certainty if it had been John or Sherlock or both, made a ridiculous squeaking sound. The headache that Sally hadn't even noticed building was suddenly ramped up. "Use your bloody _words_!"

Thus it was Sherlock who finally broke the kiss, pulling away from John's mouth, but not releasing his grip on his head. "I love you. I want you to be happy. I do. I _want_ you to be happy _with me_ , obviously, but if you can't and if the only way you can be happy is to leave me and marry her, I accept that. I don't like it, but I accept it. I just can't watch it happen."

Sherlock's voice broke and if she weren't mistaken then Sally actually saw his lip wobble a bit. She found herself embarrassed on his behalf. It was as if she'd walked in on him naked or something. Mary looked mortified, likely for more than one reason.

"I _am_ your best friend. I _am_. Please tell me you understand that. I'm not merely skipping your wedding because I'm a callous bastard who doesn't care. Please understand that. Please--"

"Yeah, um, yeah." John's face had gone all pink. "Of course. No worries. We, um, Mary and I that is, were, um, just discussing back-up, that is, Mike or Bill could..."

"Bill," Sherlock said decisively. "Mike will just lose the ring. Bill's your best man."

"You've never even met Bill. Not the point." John shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck. He glanced from Mary to Sally and back again a few times. "So, um, you have a car waiting or, I mean if not, you can flag one down about a block over, bit of a main, um, yeah, lots of taxis over that way."

Sally took that as their cue to leave. "Right. I'll see he gets home."

"Yeah. Okay. Great."

Sherlock turned toward the door and they were nearly out it when John strode forward. "Sherlock!"

They both stopped and turned in the open doorway.

"Just, um, word of advice. Don't have drunken sex with Sally Donovan, okay?"

"Ugh!" they both answered instantly with equal expressions of disdain.

"Good, good. Didn't mean to imply anything. It's just alcohol does funny things. Um, good night then."

Sally felt uncomfortably sober in the cold night air. The sway in Sherlock's gate suggested he was still a bit wobbly, but Sally was simultaneously regretting the amount she'd had to drink and wishing she had more. If she still had to get Sherlock back home (and it wasn't until at least two o'clock the following afternoon that she thought to question why that had been her responsibility), she could've done with a bit more of a buzz.

Sherlock said nothing more the rest of the night. She didn't push. She got them a taxi and went through Sherlock's pockets while he stared out the window like a statue, a sulky statue with bad posture. She had paid for the booze and the first cab ride, he could bloody well pay for her ride home. She and the driver waited in front of his door to make sure he got in safely as he fumbled with the keys.

On the solo ride home, she snorted to herself at the thought of her and Sherlock in a drunken night of rebound sex. _Ha! As if. Imagine sex with the freak._ That thought suddenly went all kinds of sideways and a little voice in the back of her head reminded her that she'd had worse. Far, far worse. All of them normal people too.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this before season three, before we met Mary or knew how the rooftop cliffhanger would be resolved.
> 
> Whenever writing for a show that's still airing, you're bound to get predictions wrong. Some of them you expect (I knew Sherlock wouldn't kiss John leading up to the wedding), some you know are likely (Sherlock actually being best man at the wedding), and some you don't see coming at all (really did not expect "Never been attacked by assassins" to be the main thing I got wrong about Mary).


End file.
